Wes Studi

This often intimidating but charismatic and ruggedly handsome actor of full-blooded Cherokee heritage enhanced several thoughtful Hollywood Westerns of the 1990s by thoroughly embodying roles that wou...
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Veteran actor Wes Studi is facing a charge of drunk driving following an arrest in New Mexico on Friday morning (26Jul13). The Last of the Mohicans star, 65, was pulled over by police in Santa Fe when they noticed the front two tyres of his vehicle had been blown out.
Cops claim he refused to take a breathalyser test and was taken to Santa Fe County Jail, where he was booked for aggravated driving while intoxicated (DWI).

"People are like, so your first Western! But it's not. I did a film called Geronimo: An American Legend. It was a hell of a cast. Jason Patric... Gene Hackman... Robert Duvall... and Wes Studi played Geronimo. I haven't seen it in years... It came out at Christmas in 1993 I think." Hollywood action man MATT DAMON insists his new movie TRUE GRIT isn't the only Western he's starred in.

Jon Favreau continues to expand the cast of his forthcoming event picture Cowboys and Aliens today with the news that Adam Beach (Big Love) will saddle up for the film, joining Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, Noah Ringer, Paul Dano and more.
Variety reports that Beach will play Nat Colorado, a half-Apache who works for Ford's character Woodrow Dollarhyde. The storyline revolves around a group of Apache Indians and Western settlers who resolve to patch up their differences and join forces when an alien spaceship crash-lands in their city. Based on the popular Platinum Studios comic, the film is being financed and distributed by Universal Pictures and DreamWorks, produced by Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Damon Lindelof from a script by Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci.
I've been looking forward to the hiring of Native American actors for this film, as the cowboys have been set in place for months with the casting of Craig, Ford and most recently, Rockwell. Though their respective characters will be important to the film, the narrative calls for a group of strong actors to portray the proud Apache warriors that join them in battle against the aliens. Beach's involvement will hopefully lead to more well known actors of Native American decent (like Wes Studi and, hell, even Benjamin Bratt) to get involved in what is already one of the most anticipated movies of 2011.
Source: Variety

Source: 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox has announced the home entertainment release date for their biggest release of the decade - James Cameron's Avatar. The Golden Globe and Academy Award winning blockbuster will be available on Blu-ray and DVD on April 22nd, 2010. Here is the press release:
AVATAR on Blu-ray presents the ultimate high definition experience for home viewing audiences. Fans around the world will soon be able to discover every detail and relive every moment of James Cameron’s AVATAR in the comfort of their own home. Blu-ray is recognized for presenting optimal picture and sound, and now AVATAR’s masterful cinematography, art direction and visual effects will lend itself to awe-inspiring clarity when you become absorbed in the extraordinary all-encompassing experience in the living room.
Since its global theatrical release last December, AVATAR has continued to make motion picture history. Written by James Cameron and produced with his long-time collaborator Jon Landau, AVATAR stars Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Wes Studi and Laz Alonso.
Oscar and Golden Globe® winning epic is the highest grossing film of all time, taking in over $2.6 billion in worldwide box office. Director James Cameron takes audiences to a spectacular world beyond imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption and discovery as he leads a heroic battle to save a civilization. AVATAR delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the epic nature of the story.
AVATAR will be available on Blu-ray Disc and DVD everywhere in the United States and Canada on Earth Day, April 22.
Below you'll find some DVD artwork provided by the studio.

Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen is leading the race to replace Kevin Costner in the sequel to Dances with Wolves.
The Holy Road is the follow-up to the hit 1990 western, which Costner directed and starred in, but Costner didn't want to reprise his John Dunbar character.
Free Willy director Simon Wincer will take over the film, and insiders suggest producers want Mortensen to play Dunbar.
Graham Greene, Mary McDonnell and Wes Studi are expected to reprise their roles from the original film, according to movie news Web site MovieHole.net.
COPYRIGHT 2008 WORLD ENTERTAINMENT NEWS NETWORK LTD. All Global Rights Reserved.

A fresh update on the Pocahontas legend. Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) arrives in disgrace on the shores of the New World but he is pardoned and soon rises to lead the English settlers of what will eventually be Jamestown Virginia. Sent to trade with a local chief Powhatan he falls in love with his daughter Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher). He follows his duty rather than his heart and returns to Jamestown whose starving citizens would not have survived the harsh winter without Pocahontas’s help. Powhatan (Wes Studi) mounts an attack to force the settlers to leave but Pocahontas warns Smith leading to her banishment and her new life with the Europeans. Eventually Smith is called away to mount his own expeditions leaving Pocahontas behind with a heavy heart. She finds a new suitor a gentleman farmer who wants to marry her but she still pines for Smith. Her fame spreads far beyond the New World back to England where she is summoned to meet the king and queen. Farrell is finally delivering on his early promise momentarily setting aside noisy action films to work with a world-class director and reminding us just how subtle of an actor he can be. The amazing chemistry between Farrell and newcomer Kilcher puts nearly every other movie pairing this year to shame. Kilcher who had one screen credit to her name before this was only 14 during filming quite close to Pocahontas’ believed age of 12 or 13. Before you reach for that picket sign please note that while the romance is incredibly sensual as is the whole film nothing is shown other than longing looks and playful platonic embraces. As Pocahontas Kilcher radiates beauty and innocence and it’s easy to see why John Smith would be mesmerized by her. After Smith has left her scenes of grief are heartfelt and her later solemnity is remarkable for someone so young. I had no idea of her real age until I looked over the production notes. Christian Bale who only shows up in the last third of the film is wonderfully restrained and melancholy as the widower who woos her after her own loss. Terrence Malick has always been a very sensual director one who can capture nature so well that you feel you are in the film not just watching it. But his previous films such as The Thin Red Line often have a way of losing focus of missing the forest for the trees of throwing out the plot for yet another beautiful but pointless shot of the landscape. Here his narrative is strong enough that we aren’t impatient when the camera lingers on lush forests or a lovers’ embrace. He’s made the love triangle the backbone of the film and you don’t miss the larger picture here at all. The film is not only achingly beautiful but deeply felt. His sympathies are clearly with the “naturals ” as the Europeans call the Native Americans; it’s from their perspective that we first see the tall ships arrive. The Englishmen part from Smith for the most part are dirty cruel and petty and the less time the film spends with them the better. What Malick has made is most definitely still an art film with occasionally abstract or non-linear editing choices but one that is never just art for art’s sake.

This is one of those Rocky-style films in which the climax is built-in. We know there's going to be a fight where the underdog goes up against the big bad champ. It's the rest of the movie that needs to keep our attention and luckily Undisputed does a decent job save a few scenes that could have been cut. When the world heavyweight boxing champ George "Iceman" Chambers (Ving Rhames) is sentenced to 6 to 8 years for rape he is sent to the newly built Sweetwater Maximum Security Prison in the Mojave Desert. Of course he vehemently denies the charges rages at his lawyers to find a way out of this mess and is generally in a pretty foul mood. In fact he bullies and pushes people around just about wherever he goes including Monroe Hutchens (Wesley Snipes) who as Chambers finds out is the reigning undisputed prison boxing champ--10 years running. Hutchens is a hero of sorts to the rest of the prisoners and this doesn't sit well with the Iceman. Seizing a glorious opportunity to make some serious cash longtime inmate and mob boss Mendy Ripstein (Peter Falk) sets up a boxing match between the two. He lures Hutchens into the ring on the promise of prize money to send home to his sister and three kids. For Iceman it's the chance to get out on special parole via mob ties to the parole board. For both it means a fight to the finish by London Prize Ring rules -- no referee lighter gloves and the last man standing wins. So who'll be king of the hill?
The fact that Rhames' Iceman is more than a little reminiscent of real-life boxing champ Mike Tyson and the legal woes he suffered a few years back is certainly not lost. Yet Rhames infuses his character with a certain intelligence and a lot of cocky bravado. When he is on the screen you can't take your eyes off him partly because he takes up half of it with his hulking mass. It's also kind of fun to see Rhames playing the baddie again although not quite as malevolent as Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction. Snipes also puts in a compelling performance as Hutchens who was on his way to being a boxing champ himself before he lost his cool in a crime of passion and wound up in prison for murder. Hutchens doesn't say much but quietly waits out his sentence making Japanese temples out of toothpicks. His character however comes alive when he is in the ring and for a man of little words Snipes looks good dealing out the punches. The supporting characters are hit and miss. Falk seems sorely out of place among all the hoodlums and just a little too senile to be believable as a tough-nut gangster. Fisher Stevens (Short Circuit) however as Hutchens' crony Ratbag lives up to his character's name nicely. Other inmates Jon Seda (Selena) as companion to Ripstein and Wes Studi (Last of the Mohicans) as the Iceman's only ally are also both memorable in small parts.
Action director Walter Hill best known for his '80s hits 48 Hrs. and The Long Riders seems to be trying out some new techniques in his older years. Without going for the typical opening credits Undisputed launches the audience right into a boxing match. Hill alternates between black and white and color to make his points but the most unique technique is how he introduces the characters. As each new character comes on screen they are immediately freeze-framed with titles detailing who they are when they were convicted and what they were convicted of. Doing this isn't necessarily a key to the story but you get to the point where you want it just because you are actually curious in finding out what crimes they've all committed. The film only drags when Rhames and Snipes are not on the screen and of course all the fancy camerawork really only pays off for the big finale. Watching these two animals duke it out in a cage is as exciting as you'd expect. Maybe not quite as bloody as say the ring action in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull but fun nonetheless.

Robert Redford's company Wildwood Prods. is set to produce Skinwalkers, a TV movie adaptation of Tony Hillerman's best-selling novel by the same name, Variety reports.
The movie, directed by Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals) and adapted by Redford's son James, will be part of PBS' "Mystery" series, making it the first American production to be a part of the 22-year-old British program.
Filming for Skinwalkers begins Monday at several Arizona sites and stars Adam Beach (Joe Dirt) and Wes Studi (The Last of the Mohicans) as Navajo tribal policemen Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn.
Redford's company has the option to produce the 13 Hillerman novels featuring the Navajo lawmen, and pending the success of Skinwalkers, there's a possibility for a "Mystery" franchise.
In 1991, Redford produced his first limited theatrical release of Hillerman novel The Dark Wind starring Lou Diamond Phillips.

Joined the American Indian Movement in the occupation of Wounded Knee, SD

Appeared on HBO in "American Reunion: The People's Inaugural Celebration", reciting "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in English and Cherokee

Summary

This often intimidating but charismatic and ruggedly handsome actor of full-blooded Cherokee heritage enhanced several thoughtful Hollywood Westerns of the 1990s by thoroughly embodying roles that would have once been mere stereotypes and imbuing them with depth and dignity. The intense and muscular Studi first gained attention playing the "toughest" of the Pawnees in Kevin Costner's ambitious and well-meaning revisionist work "Dances With Wolves" (1990). He also lent his powerful presence to Oliver Stone's "The Doors" (1991), as the silent Indian in the desert, before coming into his own as a film and TV character player.

Name

Role

Comments

Maura Dhu

Wife

third wife; born c. 1954; met in 1988 has one child with Studi; father was actor Jack Albertson who appeared in the films "The Subject Was Roses" (1968) and "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and starred in TV's "Chico and the Man"

Rebecca Graves

Wife

Cherokee; married 1974; divorced 1982; had two children with Studi

Leah Studi

Daughter

born c. 1980; mother Rebecca Graves

Daniel Studi

Son

born 1986; mother Rebecca Graves

Kholan Studi

Son

born October 29, 1993 in Santa Fe, New Mexico; mother Maura Dhu

Andy Studie

Father

Maggie Studie

Mother

Education

Name

Tulsa Junior College

Notes

His last name is pronounced STEW-dee.

Studi is the author of two books for the Cherokee Bilingual/Cross Cultural Education Center. He also did the translations into Cherokee, his native language, for Robert Schenkkan's Pulitzer Prize-winning stage drama, "The Kentucky Cycle".

"Cherokee actor Wes Studi relished playing the role of Magua in "The Last of the Mohicans". Having seen an early version of the film at a young age, Studi says, 'At that age, I could only see Magua as a total villain, with no reason for his savagery. I now know that he was a very important part of the story. It was with the reading of this script and the added insight of age that I came to realize that the soul and spirit of Magua can be found in the hearts and minds of Native Americans everywhere who have studied American history and its effects.'"--From Press kit for "The Last of the Mohicans"